I knew this Cupwise Cassette lib but i was using the Ampex one after testing against UAD because i love that on the 2buss. Could you give us some tips on how you use the Cassette Deck?

 

Nebula Nat sampling is VERY different from neural network adversarial machine learning FWIW.
Nat uses ultrasound sampling to capture ACTUAL harmonic content within an impulse response while the other is at best computer a guessing match. I'll stick to my actual hardware and Nebula, but you do you.

I love Nebula, but let's not confuse folks around here with misinformation... it's bad enough without adding to the noise.

 

Nice info. My comparation was noob/lacked this level of description, because i was only taking in consideration the fact both sampled analog gear. I know how Machine Learning profiling works, but i know very few about Nebula sampling process. When i started using Nebula, no one discussed ever about the way harmonics were created within the process of sampling. Now i understand why Nebula sounds superior against most of the profiling out there.

 

Correct gain staging is also important, as it is with the real hardware.

 

I've been into Nebula since 2009 and I took the AA developer class, so I can say for sure that the NAT Ultrasound tech is what captures the actual harmonics of the hardware sampled... it's a cool technology and the ONLY tech I know of where real harmonic content can be properly applied to digital audio. Everything else is a math guess of some kind and why we prefer the real hardware sound, and why IMHO these companies relentlessly sell us vst's that mimic what hardware brings to audio.

 

The Nebula thread on Gearspace goes back to Jan 3, 2011 and it's quite a trip.

 

Awful responsiveness and clunky gui. Very crude coding behind it and the plugins are not behaving correctly. Analyzed a lot of them, even the "standalones".. and they are buggy/badly coded so that you can get subtle but noticable changes in volume at random, even though you set everything to zero. This means it will distort the sound at unwanted times. When using clean material it becomes very noticable that they distort and cause issues with phase. Not even all the time, just at random, 100% not what the hardware does.

If you need the "sound" of a some analog gear, you can use it to capture your hardware at certain settings. But its basically just eq curves and harmonics that you can achieve with any good eq + saturation plugin you already have.
Its basically presets that are not even seemless when you change between settings. Unreliable as hell and the support from Acustica is a joke, i bought some years ago and found serious issues with lots of them, and contacted the support, but they didnt care and closed them. They know about the issues but cant fix them but will not admit the issues to the customer.

Basically most of them are increasing volume just by adding the plugin to the chain. Totally unserious. And then it has some eq curves + add some normal harmonics (combo of 2nd and 3rds etc depending on the hardware). The compressors are worthless, using the real hardware is something completely different.

 

Since i'm mixing into distortion/compression i need to proper gain stage using Nebula or not. The gain staging thing is actually one of the reasons why i love Nebula. It's ultra responsive to gain, exactly how hardware should sound. Different inputs can alter the sound drastically; some sampled gear will make wonders at high gain and be boring at low input. Other ones would break too much with high gain. Not your regular plugin that will sound the same until you hit the soft clipping area at certain threshold. You gotta listen the gain response all the time.

Spoiler: My User Tip

Use VCA faders. Once you got everything gain staged start driving and un-driving Nebula using the input gain on the VCA group. Addictive

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2026 at 9:32 PM

Same way that Taupe can shape elements in a mix as a sort of eq. A tape with with a lot of hi freq rolloff can sound great on guitars that are too harsh and so on. The tape comp and tape verbs in cassette three i use as any other comp or reverb, just when i want a little extra vibe or color.

Theres a lot of of misinformation in your post, but my main takeaway is that you are not gain-staging properly.